[Debian-med-packaging] Your try to get a free libcolt-java (Was: r16752 - in trunk/packages/libcolt-java/trunk/debian: . patches)

[Andreas Tille]

Hi folks,

I'm stumbing again and again about this issue.  Can anybody help us
solving this nasty issue.  Currently I try to build packages from
libssj-java[1] (as predependency of some other package in our focus)
which also depends from libcolt-java.  I keep on thinking that it would
really help if some other / more people would add to my nagging to
upstream for some relicensing.  My last mail about this was here:

   https://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/debian-med-packaging/2014-February/025141.html

So please people, if you really regard my work as highly as it is
expressed from time to time it would *really* safe me some time if
people would fire up their MUA and send another mail to the HEP authors
to kill the stupid addition to the GPL from their way outdated code
nobody really remembers any more but which always fires back as
stumbling stone.   If you are interested to help and have not yet
an idea what to do please ask and I'll explain in more detail.

The thing with Tims patch below is that it does not solve the licensing
issue in my opinion and Thorsten as our man in the ftpmaster team has
not respondet yet.

Kind regards

        Andreas.

[1] svn://anonscm.debian.org/debian-med/trunk/packages/libssj-java

On Tue, Apr 22, 2014 at 10:06:20PM +0200, Andreas Tille wrote:
> Hi Tim,
> 
> many thanks for trying your luck to free libcolt-java.  It is really
> appreciated and I would really love if others would try to join your
> attempt.
> 
> However, when reading your comment of the patch:
> 
> On Tue, Apr 22, 2014 at 02:49:21PM +0000, Timothy Booth wrote:
> > Added: trunk/packages/libcolt-java/trunk/debian/patches/build_without_aida_interface_defs.patch
> > ===================================================================
> > --- trunk/packages/libcolt-java/trunk/debian/patches/build_without_aida_interface_defs.patch	                        (rev 0)
> > +++ trunk/packages/libcolt-java/trunk/debian/patches/build_without_aida_interface_defs.patch	2014-04-22 14:49:20 UTC (rev 16752)
> > @@ -0,0 +1,948 @@
> > +This patch forcefully rips out references to all the I*.java interface files
> > +that are not DFSG-free, having a "no military use" restriction.
> > +
> > +See: http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/debian-med-packaging/2014-April/025987.html
> > +
> > +However, it is ambiguous whether the files uder hep/aida/ref and hep/aida/bin are also
> > +under the non-free license.  Only Wolfgang Hoschek can answer this question and he has been
> > +sadly silent so far.  So I don't know if this patch actually solves anything or not.
> > +
> > +The code is (or should be) functionally equivalent since the interface defs contain no actual code,
> > +only function and class prototypes, and the process of removing them was mostly a matter of
> > +find-and-replace of the interface names with the implementing class names.  However the code
> > +is certainly less neat after this patch - especially as I forced VariableAxis to inherit from
> > +FixedAxis - and also any code which links against Colt and references the I* classes will fail
> > +to build and will require patching too.
> > +
> > +-- Tim Booth <tbooth at ceh.ac.uk>, April 2014
> 
> I think we are not done yet.  Quoting xdocs/license.xml says:
> 
> Packages hep.aida.*
>   ...  with the exception that any usage related to military applications
>        is expressly forbidden
> 
> So I think even a patch to the existing code is not sufficient since the
> patch does not kick the code out of the source package.  We rather need
> something like
> 
>    Files-Excluded: src/hep/aida
> 
> in d/copyright to fullfill the requirement to get the package accepted
> in Debian main.  I wonder whether the package
> 
>    libjas-plotter-java
> 
> might provide some replacement code or whether we could make use of
> 
>    http://aida.freehep.org/download.thtml
> 
> (after packaging it following the scheme of other freehep packages.)
> 
> Or we try again to nag the only person who is involved in this code who
> was actually at least answering and did not covered in total silence.
> May be we really try the approach I suggested here:
> 
>    https://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/debian-med-packaging/2014-February/025141.html
> 
> Kind regards
> 
>      Andreas.
> 
> -- 
> http://fam-tille.de
> 
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